Policing in Hong Kong

Kam C. Wong

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317079026
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Criminal Procedure
• Index: Law

This book is one of the first to document the challenges and opportunities facing the Hong Kong police force following the reversion of political authority from the UK to China in 1997. Thematically organized and oriented towards those issues of greatest concern to the public, such as police accountability, assaults on police, police deployment, surveillance powers, and policing across borders, it provides a detailed discussion of these and other contemporary issues. The opening chapter sets the work within historical context while the final chapter provides a comparison of policing in Hong Kong with public security in the PRC. The book will be of value to students and researchers working in the area of comparative policing, and comparative criminal justice, as well as police professionals, and policy-makers.

Chapter 1
Policing Hong Kong: The Early Years

From the Editorial: … How is Hongkong to be governed by Great Britain? When shall we have a Government that shall govern Hongkong? Where are we to find Government that shall govern Hong Kong?

Hongkong Daily Press, November 7, 18711

It is not astonishing, therefore, situated as is Hongkong, with a population recruited almost from the dregs of society, that enormous difficulties should have been experienced from the very outset in establishing a proper form of government in the Colony … A question not seldom mooted has been the fitness of English law for the Government of the Chinese ….

James William Norton-Kyshe (1898)2

Introduction

British Marines first landed in Hong Kong on January 25, 1841. The next day, without the benefit of a ratified treaty, Commodore Sir J.G. Bremer took “formal possession” of Hong Kong as a Crown Colony.3 At first sight, the Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston described Hong Kong dismissively as a “barren rock” not worth fighting over.4 However, in this regard the Foreign Secretary, while echoing the sentiments in England at the time, was grossly uninformed and widely mistaken. Still, Palmerston was pragmatic enough to realize Hong Kong’s strategic importance. He forthwith instructed Charles Elliot to hold onto Hong Kong unless a better substitute became known: “examine with care the natural capacities of Hong Kong, and you will not agree to give up that Island unless you should find that you can exchange it for another in the neighbourhood of Canton, better adapted for the purposes in view; equally defensible; and affording sufficient shelter for Ships of War and Commerce.”5

Before the arrival of the British, Hong Kong was sparsely populated. However, people had lived in Hong Kong for centuries and had developed their own way of life, evidence being a town center at Aberdeen and schools at Stanley. Indeed, from the Chinese standpoint, Hong Kong was hardly a “barren” rock devoid of people and activities, economic or social. Even among the Europeans, Dr Eitel, a veteran of Hong Kong, observed: “For at least a century before the British occupation of Hong Kong, there were already small Chinese Schools in existence in the village of Wongnaichung, Stanley, Little Hongkong and Aberdeen ….”6 “Poor and lawless as most of the Chinese inhabitants of Hong Kong were at the time. They were not forgetful of the value of education.”7

Two years after the British landing, on April 23, 1843, Hong Kong was officially ceded to Great Britain under the Treaty of Nanking.8 Instantaneously, 12,501 local residents became British charges. This chapter describes policing in Hong Kong in the earlier years of the colony.

With the arrival of the British, Hong Kong began to change, first economically,9 then socially,10 politically11 and culturally.12 Overnight Hong Kong transformed from being a sleepy residential enclave at the margin of China13 to a bustling world trade center. Depending on historical narratives,14 Hong Kong also served as a beachhead for the British to promote opium trade in China and/or a window for China to practice free trade with the rest of the world.15

In British eyes, Great Britain was at the peak of its power in the pursuit of its divine destiny. It sought to remake Hong Kong and China in its own image—free, orderly, humane, enlightened and above all progressive:

Placed on the borders of an Empire so full of contradictions as China, with its uncontrolled millions, conservative and prejudiced to the backbone, a people totally ignorant and indifferent as to Western ideas or modes of Government, it seems as if Hongkong by it position had been destined to become the starting point from hence a civilizing power by its beneficent rule and humane laws was to endeavour to effect those reforms which an uncivilized power like China was ever in need of.16

However, according to Chinese historians, British rule of Hong Kong was an exploitative and oppressive venture:

From the day Hong Kong was seized by British colonialists, the governors as rulers became the British government’s highest authority. Under the instruction of the British Crown, governors carried out the mandate of the British empire, were loyal to the British government and executed colonial rule in Hong Kong. Their ultimate goal was to secure maximum profit for the British government, while transforming Hong Kong into a forward base for the invasion of China. The governors occupied a supreme position locally. They stood for democracy in their own country and the West, but in Hong Kong and the East, they were symbols of imperialism. They used cruel methods, stern punishment and oppressive law to suppress the Chinese people. They tolerated no dissent and only resorted to softer cooptation to induce or secure imperial rule ….17

The British ultimately failed in converting the Chinese, not for lack of effort, but due to a poor understanding of what policing Chinese requires and entails.18 The British also suffered problems in maintaining law and order over the European residents. In 1858, the China Mail stated about Hong Kong’s governance:

With about 50 officials to govern five hundred merchants and not to govern 60,000 Chinese, who can wonder at disputes, with all our English, American, French, Germans, Moormen, Parsees, merchants, storekeepers, opium-sellers, gamblers and pirates, each under the supervision and control of his own consul or commander, Secretary or Protector, who in their turn are under the control of a Governor, who is under the control of a Secretary of a State? All these are crowded together in a place about half as big as Hyde Park, and people at home wonder that they fall out and fight, slander, and go to law perpetually.19

This book is an investigation into the various issues afflicting the Hong Kong Police (HKP) as it tried to negotiate the political storm and social undercurrent that was 1997. In order to understand the present, we need to inquire into the past. Thus, a study of the policing of Hong Kong in its formative years will be apposite. Specifically, how the British colonial government, given its ideological inclination, commercial interests and imperialistic goals, came to gain control over an alien (nationalistic) and alienated (anti-foreign) population.20 This entails exploring the origin and development of the HKP as an institution, detailing the methods of control employed and the problems experienced in colonial policing in Hong Kong.

This chapter is organized into seven sections: I. “Seizure of Hong Kong” documents the circumstances leading up to Hong Kong being ceded to Great Britain as a Crown Colony; II. “Mandate for Hong Kong Governance” discusses the treaty provisions (Treaty of Nanking) and royal instructions pertaining to how the people of Hong Kong were to be governed; III. “Hong Kong before the British” contextualizes the current investigation with a brief description of the conditions of Hong Kong—people, place, society—before the arrival of the British; IV. “People of Hong Kong” details the demographics of Hong Kong—composition, organization, characteristics, growth, attitude and relationships. It further explores how such features bear upon policing in Hong Kong; V. “Philosophy and Charter of Governance” describes the terms and conditions upon which Hong Kong was to be governed; VI. “Crime” spells out the nature and extent of crime in Hong Kong at the time; VII. “Origins of Policing” traces the development of the Hong Kong Police, from the appointment of William Caine to the position of first Chief Magistrate, to the installation of Charles May as Chief Superintendent of Police to build the first police force in the Colony.

I. Seizure of...